Posts Tagged ‘tool’

Basicly I am against the use of any Cloud type of service but as nowadays Cloud usage is almost inevitable and most of the times you need some kind of service to store and access remotely your Data from multiple devices such as DropBox, Google Drive, iCloudetc. and using some kind of infrastructure to execute high-performance computing is invitable just like the Private Cloud paid services online are booming nowdays, I decided to give a to research and test what is available as a free software in the field of Clouding (your data) 🙂

Undoubfully, it is really nice fact that there are Free Software / Open Source alternatives to run your Own personal Cloud to store your data from multiple locations on a single point.

The most popular and leading Cloud Collaboration service (which is OpenSource but unfortunately not under GPLv2 / GPV3 – e.g. not fully free software) is OwnCloud.

ownCloud is a flexible self-hosted PHP and Javascript based web application used for data synchronization and file sharing (where its remote file access capabilites are realized by Sabre/Dav an open source WebDav server.OwnCloud allows end user to easily Store / Manage files, Calendars, Contacts, To-Do lists (user and group administration via OpenID and LDAP), public URLs can be easily, created, the users can interact with browser-based ODF (Open Document Format) word processor , there is a Bookmarking, URL Shortening service integrated, Gallery RSS Feed and Document Viewer tools such as PDF vieweretc. which makes it a great alternative to the popular Google Drive, iCloud, DropBox etc.

The main advantage of using a self-hosted Cloud is that Your data is hosted and managed by you (on your server and your hard drives) and not by some God knows who third party provider such as the upmentioned.
In other words by using OwnCloud you manage your own data and you don't share it ot on demand with the Security Agencies with CIA, MI6, Mussad … (as it is very likely most of publicly offered Cloud storage services keeps track on the data stored on them).

The other disadvantage of Cloud Computing is that the stored data on such is usually stored on multiple servers and you can never know for sure where your data is physically located, which in my opinion is way worse than the option with Self Hosted Cloud where you know where your data belongs and you can do whatever you want with your data keep it secret / delete it or share it on your demand.

OwnCloud has its clients for most popular Mobile (Smart Phone) platforms – an Android client is available in Google Play Store as well as in Apple iTunes besides the clients available for FreeBSD OS, the GNOME desktop integration package and Raspberry Pi.

For those who are looking for additional advanced features an Enterprise version of OwnCloud is also available aiming business use and included software support.

By default OwnCloud does use SQLite as a backend data storage but as SQLite stores its data in a file and is becoming quickly slow, is generally speaking slowre than relational databases such as MariaDB server (or the now almost becoming obsolete MySQL Community server).
Hence in this article I will explain how to install OwnCloud with MariaDB as a backend.

If you don't have it installed already, e.g. it is a new dedicated server install MariaDB with:

4. Install Redis to use as a Memory Cache for accelerated / better performance ownCloud service

Redis is an in-memory kept key-value database that is similar to Memcached so OwnCloud could use it to cache stored data files. To install latest redis-server on Debian 9:

server:~# apt-get install –yes redis-server

5. Install ownCloud software packages on the server

Unfortunately, default package repositories on Debian 9 does not provide owncloud server packages but only some owncloud-client packages are provided, that's perhaps the packages issued by owncloud does not match debian packages.

As of time of writting this article, the latest available OwnCloud server version package for Debian is OC 10.

a) Add necessery GPG keys

The repositories to use are provided by owncloud.org, to use them we need to first add the necessery gpg key to verify the binaries have a legit checksum.

By default owncloud store file location is /var/www/owncloud but on many servers that location is not really appropriate because /var/www might be situated on a hard drive partition whose size is not big enough, if that's the case just move the folder to another partition and create a symbolic link in /var/www/owncloud pointing to it …

Just fill in in your desired user / pass and pass on the database user / password / db name (if required you can set also a different location for the data directory from the default one /var/www/owncloud/data.

Click Finish Setup andThat's all folks!

OwnCloud is successfully installed on the server, you can now go and download a Mobile App or Desktop application for whatever OS you're using and start using it as a Dropbox replacement. In a certain moment you might want to consult also the official UserManual documentation as you would probably need further information on how to manage your owncloud.

The term Bloatware (also called jokingly crapware) is term is the one that was coined to describe, the default pre-installed software that comes to you together with Windows pre-installed OS by the hardware manufacturer.
I'm sure anyone who bought brand new branded PC or laptop over the last 10 years have already suffered the unwanted and unnecessery
bunch of software that comes pre-installed freeware programs aiming to help you in your daily work but in reality just slowing down your PC
and showing annoying popups or at best keeping useless in Windows system apptray.

Many users may want to uninstall ASUS Crapware software such as ASUS Tutor, ASUS LifeFrame3, ASUS WebStorage and ASUSVibe.

Like Asus, HP computers often come preloaded with useless software from factory, example for this is HP Customer Service enhancements, HP Update, HP Total Care Setup and ProtectSmart.

If you buy Dell PC notebook soon you'll discover that there are several preloaded software (often unnecessery software) such as Dell Stage, Dell Digital Delivery and Dell DataSafe.

Toshiba computers and notebooks contain pre-loeaded "crapware" software from Toshiba.
Just to mention a few of those: Toshiba Disc Creator, Toshiba ReelTime, Service Station, Bulletin Board and Toshiba Assist.

Often there are fingerprint reader programs, Wi-Fi connection managers, Bluetooth managers, Audio Management sofware and other third party vendor software which tend to be not working as good as others softwares from third vendor, so Decrap is to help you to identify and remove these too in a easy GUI manner.

Non-experienced Computer users often leave the bloatware to hang around for even years and only if some relative that is an IT involved person / sysadmin / Even once you're aware that the Bloatware is on the system the ordinary user is hard to remove it as he is scared not to break the system.
Besides that fften this bloatware just soft comes so much integrated into Windows that removing it costs hours of tries and research online on
all the Bloatware components and even then could mislead you so you break the PC. programmer etc. comes home of such users finds out about the happily existing of the useless software on the notebook.

So here is DecrapMy Computer coming at place aiming to help to remove the unnecessery Hardware vendor software in few easy (Click, Click, Click Next ..) steps.

Then decrap does silently all the complex operations and suggestions to make the HP, Dell, Asus, Toshiba manufacturer prebundled software to be stopped and uninstalled.Decrap My Computer is a freeware, lightweight and easy to use and lets you safely remove crapware and bloatware, or any software, from any Windows PC.

Even for Old computers, Decrap comes handy for the unexperienced avarage user who used his laptop with this useless default vendors programs silently killing the performance respectively user experience for years.

Using Decrap is quite intuitive PC is scanned for Bloatware and then after a backup Windows Restore Point is offered you're offered to review and Uninstall the unwanted softwares. There is also an automatic mode but those one still could be a bit dangerous, so use the automatic mode only on multiple machines with the same model / brand notebooks that comes prebundled with same sofware after testing and confirming the automatic mode on 1 initial machine will not break up some needed functionality.

However some users might prefer to not bother with command line check what is locking a file and then killing the Process manually with taskmanager (taskmgr.exe) but do both file unlocking from one single gui interface, that's especially for lazy novice users, gamers and most of Desktop Windows users.

If you're one of those lazy users you will appriace

Unlocker – a useful utility for unlocking files, it will help you figure out which file is using a file what program is using the file you're prevented to delete.
Unlocker is the tool for you if you get any of below error messages, when you try to delete a file:

Cannot delete folder: It is being used by another person or program

Cannot delete file: Access is denied

There has been a sharing violation.

The source or destination file may be in use.

The file is in use by another program or user.

Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

NB! Beware while installing Unlocker you might be offered to install a bunch of malware (make sure you deselect it). Also Unlocker's site is made in a way so the Download button could easily be confused with some Google Adsense

Click on the file that is being locked and choose the Unlocker button, for example if you have a bunch of Videos installed and the video is being locked by VLC clicking on the file you will be shown VLC like in below screenshot

As you see you're shown the Process PID that is being used by the file the full path to the locking program and you have the option to quickly kill the process or unlock the file. Note that at some cases unlocking a file used by some critical program lets say Microsoft Word / Excel or OneNote could cause you a data loss, so before unlocking a file make sure you know what you're doing.

For more advanced users that still prefer GUI to find out what is Locking a file you can also check out Microsoft Process Explorer (advabced task manager) like tool.
If you haven't tried Process Explorer be sure to take a look at it as its a great tool for Win SysAdmins:

Process Explorer is very handy if you want to explore which .DLL (Windows Libraries) are used by a Process / Program

If you're forced to update some Java based Web application using Java + Tomcat / WebSphere / Weblogic it is a common thing that the Java App developer handed to you will ask you which version is the Oracle JDBC / ODBC driver on current Java Virtual Machine version installed.

Actually there are few methods to check Java JDBC / ODBC version:

1. Check Java ODBC version greeping it in WEB-INF/MANIFEST.MF

Usually the .jar file comes archived in a .ZIP – i.e. application-name5 .zip

server:~# unzip application-name5.zip

Then if the .zip file contains the OJDBC as a .JAR extension – (Java Archive), inflate it with jar tool.

As Linux admin, I'm already aware of AllTray *NIX application able to send any application to GNOME / KDE tray.
But what If you have a program on Windows XP / 7 / 8, that doesn't have a minimize to tray functionality and you want to send it to tray?I.e. what if you want to send programs like Notepad (that doesn't by default go to win systray) to Windows tray in order to prevent them mess up with other Open Windows minimized windows?

After a quick research on the topic I found these 3 – RBtray, Trayconizer, HideIt, Below is a very quick review on each

.

1. Minimize any Windows program to tray with RBTray

If you want to stick to open source (GPL) software a tiny free software proggie that does the trick is RBTray current latest RBtray is 4.3 release is download mirror is here.

To use RBTray you don't need to do anything, once program is unarchived from archive, once launched there will be no system application that it is running, but you can go to any minimized program (not in tray) and by clicking with right mouse button on minimize button you will the app minimize to tray.

Here is how RBTray works (taken from archive README file):

Installing:Extract the 32-bit or 64-bit binaries (depending on your OS) to a
folder, e.g.
C:Program FilesRBTray. Double click RBTray.exe to start it. If you want it
to automatically start after you reboot, create a shortcut to RBTray.exe in
your Start menu's Startup group.

Using:
Right click on any program's minimize button to minimize it to the tray. To
restore, single-click the program's icon in the tray.

Exiting:
Right click on any tray icon created by RBTray and click Exit RBTray in the
popup menu. Or run RBTray.exe with the –exit parameter.

2. Miminize any app to system tray with Trayconizer

Trayconizer is the other tray minizer tool you might want to check out, Windows tray minize application a download mirror of Trayconizer is here. As of time of writing this post (current) latest Trayconizer version is 1.1.1.

Trayconizer allows you to minimize virtually any application to the system tray rather than having it take up valuable space in your taskbar. The screen shot to the left shows Trayconizer minimizing Notepad to the system tray. Trayconizer is definitely the tool of choice of system administrators who need to keep minimized windows program to system tray each time on boot as it can be easily run from command line.

Using Trayconizer is simple. To start Trayconizer on Notepad, you would execute: C:PathToTrayconizer.exe C:WindowsNotepad.exe.

You can create a shortcut in your Startup group to execute Trayconizer on a program that you use frequently but want to keep tucked out of the way in the system tray when you're not using it. There is even an option for starting the application initially in the minimized state.

Trayconizer will automatically shut itself down when you close the program you are Trayconizing. Additionally, multiple Trayconized programs are handled by a single instance of Trayconizer to avoid wasting system resources.

Trayconizer requires no DLL's beyond the base Win32 API libraries and will not store any entries in your registry.

3. Minimize any program to Windows systray with Windows HideIT

Another good tool useful in hiding (minimizing) Windows programs which are lacking the minimize option embedded built-in is Windows HideIT.

Hideit should be able to minimize any Application to sysytem tray, while Rbtray fails ith some. Both RBtray and Windows
HIdeIT will popup with a blue down-arrow on Tray icon once launched and you can show / hide minimized applications from there.

All RbTray, Trayconizer and HideIt tray minimizers should work on virtually all NT 4.0 Windows XP / 2000 / Vista / 7 / 8 though I haven't tested on all of 'em yet. If you happen to find it working on Win NT 4.0 / 8 etc., please drop a comment.

If you are using a Dual-boot PC with installed M$ Windows and GNU .Linux OS storing many of yourDocuments / Music / Movie dataon Linux's ext3 / ext4 filesystem partition but using often also Windows PC for Professional Graphic Design or Photoshop CS5 / Coreldraw Graphics Suite X7 / 3D Studio / Adobe Drewmweaveryou will certainly want to be able to mount (Map drive) as a drive Linux partitionsext3 / ext4or Mac OS's HFS+ read / use it straight from Windows.

Other useful multiplatorm Linux FS reader unfortunately proprietary one is ParagonExtFS – proprietary software having version for both Win OS and Mac (Supports also mounting Linux partitionons Mac).

Note that if you copy some files using some of above tools to Windows permissions held in Linux could screw up, so it is not a good idea to try backup Linux configuration files to Windows's partitions 🙂

Linux users know pretty well Nmap (network mapper) tool which is precious in making a quick server host security evaluation.Nmap binary port is available for Windows too, however as nmap is port for its normal operation you have to install WinPcap (Packet Capture Library).
And more importantly it is good to mention if you need to do some remote port scanning from Windows host, there is Microsoft produced native tool calledPortQry (Port Query).

PortQRY is a must have tool for the Windows Admin as it can help you troubleshoot multiple network issues.

Port Query UI tool (portqueryui.exe) is a tool to query open ports on a machine. This tool makes use of command line version port query tool (portqry.exe). The UI provides the following functionalities:

1. Following "Enter destination IP or FQDN to query:”, an edit box needs the user to specify the IP address or FDQN name of the destination to query port status.

2. The end user is able to choose Query type:

– Predefined services type. It groups ports into service, so that you can query multiple ports for a service by a single click. Service includes "Domains and Trusts", "DNS Queries", "NetBIOS communication", "IPSEC", "Networking", "SQL Service", "WEB Service", "Exchange Server", "Netmeeting", and other services.

You can check detail port and protocol info for each service category by opening Help -> Predefined Services…

A network socket request initiation is useful from certain port because, some remote services expect connection from certain ports, lets say you're connecting to mail server, you might want to set as a source port – port 25, to make remote server another SMTP is connecting.

Telerik's Fiddler is a Browser plugin and a Windows Desktop application to monitor HTTP and HTTPS outbound web traffic and report and provide you with various information useful for:

Performance Testing

HTTP / HTTPS

Traffic recording

Security Testing

Web Session Manipulation

Encode Decode web traffic

Convert strings from / to Base64, Hex, DeflatedSAML etc.

Log all URL requests originating from all opened browsers on your Desktop

Decrypt / encrypt HTTPS traffic using man in the middle techniques

Show tuning details for accessed web pages

Fiddler is available to install and use as a desktop application (requires .NET 2) or install as a browser plugin. Perhaps the coolest Fiddler feature from my perspective is its decrypt / encrypt in Base64 and Hex available from TextWizard menu. The tool is relatively easy to use for those who have experience in web debugging, for novice here is a video explaining tool's basics.

Luckibackup is a GUI frontend to the infamous rsync command line backup tool. Luckibackup is available as a package in almost all modern Linux distributions its very easy to setup and can save you a lot of time especially if you have to manage a number of your Workplace Desktop Office Linux based computers.Luckibackup is an absolute must have program for Linux Desktop start-up users. If you're migrating from Microsoft Windows realm and you're used to BackupPC, Luckibackup is probably the defacto Linux BackupPC substitute.

The sad news for Linux GNOME Desktop users is luckibackup is written in QT and it using it will load up a bit your notebook.
It is not installed by default so once a new Linux Desktop is installed you will have to install it manually on Debian and Ubuntu based Linux-es to install Luckibackup apt-get it.

[root@centos :~]# yum -y install luckibackup
.Luckibackup is also ported for OpenSuSE Slackware, Gentoo, Mandriva and ArchLinux. In 2009 Luckibackup won the prize of Sourceforge Community Choice Awards for "best new project".

luckyBackup copies over only the changes you've made to the source directory and nothing more.
You will be surprised when your huge source is backed up in seconds (after the first backup).

Whatever changes you make to the source including adding, moving, deleting, modifying files / directories etc, will have the same effect to the destination.
Owner, group, time stamps, links and permissions of files are preserved (unless stated otherwise).

Luckibackup creates different multiple backup "snapshots".Each snapshot is an image of the source data that refers to a specific date-time.Easy rollback to any of the snapshots is possible. Besides that luckibackup support Sync (just like rsync) od any directories keeping the files that were most recently modified on both of them.

Useful if you modify files on more than one PCs (using a flash-drive and don't want to bother remembering what did you use last. Luckibackup is capable of excluding certain files or directories from backups – Exclude any file, folder or pattern from backup transfer.

After each operation a logfile is created in your home folder. You can have a look at it any time you want.

luckyBackup can run in command line if you wish not to use the gui, but you have to first create the profile that is going to be executed.
Type "luckybackup –help" at a terminal to see usage and supported options.
There is also TrayNotification – Visual feedback at the tray area informs you about what is going on.

As part of my passion for ASCII art, I've found another interesting tool useful to ASCII art maniacs like me, the tool is called ditta and is able to convert manually drawn ASCII art diagrams to graphics, below is tool description from my debian apt-cache as well as a screenshot:

Ditaa text diagram to Graphics converter is also available in Fedora Linux and in Source RPMs to be used on Redhat Based RPM distributions.
To install in most of RPM based Linuxes:

[root@fedora:~]# yum install -y ditaa
…

For most people probably Ditta will not be of any value except as a PoC and of a Hack value just like Ditaa's home page suggests. Nomatter that Ditta is cool but has just 2 drawback it doesn't understand non-latin characters i.e. Cyrillic and requires Java Virtual Machine .. but if you're a real geek you will do the sacrifice to install a whole bunch of the heavy java for the sake of some oldschool fun 🙂 Being written in Java makes Ditta multi-platform, but you will need a Java VM version of at least 1.6 (it doesn't work with Java 1.5).

The format Ditta understands is close to HTML

<ditaa [optional parameters]>
... (some ditaa-code) ...
</ditaa>

There are also special tags understood by Ditta which are automatically turned into shaped graphical buttons and forms.

Possible tags

Not all shape selector tags are documented on the ditaa site. A quick source scan revealed: